Research In Motion Ltd. will likely continue to dominate the high-end mobile e-mail market, according to Strategy Analytics. But the growing number of open-standard service providers will drive the market in the long term, the market research firm predicted.
The BlackBerry maker’s market share dipped five points to 59 percent in the first half of 2006 as RIM settled a long-running dispute with patent-holding company NTP Inc., Strategy Analytics said. The installed base of mobile e-mail users is expected to double this year, though, as open mobile e-mail standards mature, allowing developers to build applications and services without paying costly royalties for proprietary software.
“Not having to pay the piper is really the driving factor,” said Cliff Raskind, the firm’s director of wireless enterprise strategies. “Also, with the ability to participate in setting these standards, it affords (developers) a lot more flexibility. They’re less at the mercy of certain large players.”
Open-standard solutions also could allow companies to avoid the rash of litigation that continues to plague the space. RIM has fought a seemingly endless string of patent-infringement cases in North America and Europe, including the $612 million payout to NTP. Visto Corp., a California-based developer, won a decision late last year against Seven Networks Inc. and has since brought legal action against RIM, Microsoft Corp. and Good Technology Inc. RIM, in turn, filed a counterclaim.
Analysts say all the legal wrangling is hindering the still-untapped market for mobile e-mail, leaving both consumers and businesses wary of embracing services that may be shut down by the courts. RIM lost considerable traction in the market before it settled with NTP, for instance, due to the threat of an injunction that would have killed service to roughly 4 million U.S. subscribers.
“I’d say there’s a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt on the part of the IT world in terms of what’s coming down the road with respect to lawsuits,” Raskind said. “A lot of IT departments are a bit reticent to invest.”
Canada’s Consilient Technologies Corp., Funambol Inc. of California, and U.K.-based developers Isode and Synchronica plc are all hoping to assuage consumer fears with open-standard protocols that are less vulnerable to-but not necessarily immune from-legal attack.
Consilient’s solution uses Push Internet Message Access Protocol, which it developed with China Mobile and LG Electronics Co. Ltd. Isode offers another P-IMAP-based technology, dubbed Lemonade, with supporters including Cingular Wireless L.L.C., Comverse Technology Inc., Nokia Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp.
Both Funambol and Synchronica have developed solutions based on SyncML, an Open Mobile Alliance standard also known as OMA DS. While other standards have impressive backers, SyncML may have an edge due to the number of devices it can work with, according to Entiva Group Inc.
“With 75 percent of the handsets on the market supporting SyncML, it is poised to become the fastest-growing open source middleware platform,” the firm wrote earlier this year in a research note touting Funambol’s offering, which is offered free to developers. “In the future, as more and more mobile SyncML devices are made available, (Funambol) will be in a prime position to grab a good deal of market share, without having to require any changes from vendors or users.”
SyncML, however, may not offer the optimized push e-mail platform that makes P-IMAP so attractive. While SyncML was designed for generic data synchronization, P-IMAP is built specifically for push e-mail. P-IMAP can selectively access and retrieve message components and access messages filed in shared folders as well as a user’s inbox.
Open-standard software developers have managed to avoid the courtroom for years-in contrast to proprietary technology vendors-but patent-litigation troubles may be brewing on the horizon. Linux developer Red Hat Inc.’s subsidiary, JBoss, in June was sued by FireStar Software Inc. in what is believed to be the first U.S. lawsuit against an open-source company.
Indeed, the very thing that makes open standards so attractive may be their Achilles heel. Open standards allow would-be litigants to research the technology for any hint of patent infringements.
For now, though, open-source mobile e-mail providers are slowly gaining ground against their proprietary competitors. Synchronica last month scored a deal with IXI Mobile Inc. to provide push e-mail for Ogo devices, and Consilient in June signed an agreement to deliver mobile e-mail for Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. Funambol has been deployed by ePLDT, the largest operator in the Philippines.
While application service providers drive the market over the next year or two, Strategy Analytics predicted, open-source technology eventually will help put mobile e-mail service into the hands of everyday wireless users. Even proprietary developers may embrace P-IMAP once the standard is formally completed later this year, Raskind predicted. “The benefactors of P-IMAP include SEMC (Sony Ericsson), Oracle, LG, China Mobile, Ericsson, Siemens, Sanyo and Nokia, which leads me to believe that support for it will be on the roadmap of some of today’s proprietary solutions,” said Raskind.
“I would not be surprised to see Nokia/Intellisync eventually fold in some level of support for P-IMAP in time.”
